Wednesday, November 03, 2010

A Holiday Book in Review: Sticks and Stones

Sticks and Stones The Troublesome Success of Children's Literature from Slovenly Peter to Harry Potter By: Jack Zipes
Non-fiction: writing, literature, essays, 188 pages
Book Count: 75

This book is a collection of essays, most of them had been used at other times. One was new and one was a mix of two different ones. They are all on the issues of writing for children. The book points out a lot of issues, with the main two being children's books are mainly bought and there forth made for adults and issues of culture and society and their effects on children and their books. It doesn't really do much to answer any of these problems. It would be a good thing to read if you were a teacher or librarian or otherwise working with picking out books for kids; however, I don't think that people writing kids books would get much out of this to help their writing. Also, when talking down about books that were formulaic, commercial, stereotypical or otherwise things that he thought were things that are wrong with kids books he would note authors that he felt were good because they weren't these things, but he didn't include any information like books they wrote to help people that aren't experts in this field have some idea who they are.

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